Speaker 1: The Craig Ferguson Pants on Fire Tour is on sale now.
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Speaker 1: or at your local outlet in your region. My name
Speaker 1: is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy.
Speaker 1: I talk to interest in people about what brings them happiness.
Speaker 1: On the podcast Today EO Scott, Anthony Oliver Scott, or
Speaker 1: Tony Scott to his friends, of which there are many.
Speaker 1: Tony was one of the chief movie critics in the
Speaker 1: New York Times for about twenty years and now is
Speaker 1: a literary critic on the New York Times Book Review
Speaker 1: or New York Times Review of Books. I think it
Speaker 1: is Actually he's very clever, he's very informed, and he's
Speaker 1: just a very interesting man. I hope you enjoy this
Speaker 1: conversation as much as I do. Tony. I didn't know
Speaker 1: until right now that you called yourself Tony. I was
Speaker 1: going to call you AO all day. That's okay. Does
Speaker 1: anybody ever call you AO?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Okay, good. I don't think they should. I don't know
Speaker 1: they should call you. Why did you start using your initials?
Speaker 1: Because because of the filmmaker Tony.
Speaker 3: Scott a little bit, although I wasn't a film critic
Speaker 3: at the time, but it was I was run by
Speaker 3: Tony Scott. And there were actually a few Tony Scott's.
Speaker 3: There was the filmmaker, there was a baseball player when
Speaker 3: I was growing up. There's a jazz saxophonist. So the
Speaker 3: world seemed to be full of Tony Scott's and AO.
Speaker 3: The initials were had been used in my family. My
Speaker 3: great grandfather was also AO, and he had a company
Speaker 3: in the little town in Ohio where my grandfather and
Speaker 3: father grew up. That was called AO Scott and Sons,
Speaker 3: And when I was a kid, this was the family
Speaker 3: business and they were like I had little pencils that
Speaker 3: said AO Scott on them and like little stationary So
Speaker 3: it was it was. I had some association with it. It
Speaker 3: didn't just come out of nowhere. So I thought that'd
Speaker 3: be an interesting tribute to the ancestors.
Speaker 1: I think it's delightful now until well last year, you
Speaker 1: were the chief film critic of the New York Times, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, I was. I was eight chief film Creig when
Speaker 3: all the Dargas was was the other one. We kind
Speaker 3: of did it together.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing, though, I before we started this,
Speaker 1: I thought what kind of reviews AO Scott gave any
Speaker 1: movie I was in? So I looked up. You know what.
Speaker 1: You gave me good reviews for a couple of movies
Speaker 1: that I did back in the day. You gave me
Speaker 1: a good review for a movie called Saving Grace, which
Speaker 1: I had written and I was in, and you were
Speaker 1: very nice about it, I think, very fair about it.
Speaker 1: And then you had made because it was all in
Speaker 1: the New York Times app and the other one was
Speaker 1: a movie I'm very proud of called The Big Teas,
Speaker 1: which is a hairdressing competitive hairdressing movie that completely tanked. Yes,
Speaker 1: but it was. It was and is I think a
Speaker 1: fabulous film that is sadly no one's ever seen except you.
Speaker 1: But you probably can't remember it because you've seen so many.
Speaker 3: I vaguely remember it now that you've said the title,
Speaker 3: I don't think I'll tell you. I haven't thought about
Speaker 3: it in don't know what is it twenty years?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I haven't either, and I made it. But
Speaker 1: it's funny though, because I guess you get a similar
Speaker 1: thing to me, like I I get people like once
Speaker 1: I saw a documentary about Leonard Nimoy right, and it
Speaker 1: was a beautiful documentary. I don't know if you've seen it,
Speaker 1: called Becoming Spoke. His son made it. It's a real
Speaker 1: kind of love letter to his father's and I watched
Speaker 1: it was very emotional and I said to my wife
Speaker 1: at the time of coursh that was lovely. I really
Speaker 1: wish i'd had him on the late night show. And
Speaker 1: then she googled it and he'd be on twice. I
Speaker 1: was like a new recollection on it. Does that happen
Speaker 1: to you as well? Like you get movies, you've you've
Speaker 1: reviewed them, you thought about them, and then they go away.
Speaker 2: It happens all the time.
Speaker 3: People will say, you know, I saw this movie, you know,
Speaker 3: the other night, and they'll they'll they'll, you know, say
Speaker 3: the title and I'll be like, oh, that sounds interesting.
Speaker 3: I've never seen it, and they were like, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: because you're you know.
Speaker 2: The DVD.
Speaker 4: Yes, I read it, because you reviewed it. It's it's
Speaker 4: it's very kind of humbling in a way because you,
Speaker 4: you know, you you you you put this work into
Speaker 4: this thing. You think, you think hard about it, you know,
Speaker 4: and and I always trying to do to do my
Speaker 4: best and not phone it in and and and take
Speaker 4: the movie seriously and think about it. But just you know,
Speaker 4: the the human brain and the passage of time, and
Speaker 4: you just kind of you lose it.
Speaker 1: But it's very interesting though, you, you and I my friend,
Speaker 1: we are dinosaurs. We are we are the last of
Speaker 1: a generation whose our memories will not be digitized from now.
Speaker 1: It's true, you know, my children, your children, their children,
Speaker 1: everybody will have a digital record of nearly everything they
Speaker 1: did and where they were. And I think that's kind
Speaker 1: of sad, because you you lose although I mean, and
Speaker 1: in one way it's good, I guess, because you can
Speaker 1: remember a lot more. But in a way it's because
Speaker 1: I think you lose. Memory does play some lovely tricks.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It helps you deal with stuff. It's a very clever
Speaker 3: thing it does. And and and forgetting is part of it.
Speaker 3: Forgetting and then you know, remembering what you've forgotten. So
Speaker 3: I have you know, I have all these books on
Speaker 3: my shelves, and and and I picked them up sometimes
Speaker 3: and I find, you know, I I I find things I.
Speaker 2: Wrote in them, notes I made and I don't remember.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, but but but it does come back.
Speaker 3: The thing is that you know your your your can
Speaker 3: reawaken in your brain and I think there's something. I
Speaker 3: think you're yeah, there is something lost. If the idea
Speaker 3: is just that there is a digital record that says,
Speaker 3: you know, this is everything you've read, this is everything
Speaker 3: you've watched, this is how long I mean, now you
Speaker 3: know you you you go to to UH to read
Speaker 3: an article in the New York Times online, and it
Speaker 3: will tell you how long readers spent on it.
Speaker 1: I know that's right. Yeah, that must be unnerving. If
Speaker 1: you're writing for the New York Times and you say, wow,
Speaker 1: that's this one held people for two minutes.
Speaker 3: Well exactly, it's a little it's a little unnerving when
Speaker 3: you you know, you look, you look at the data
Speaker 3: and it says, you know, readers spend one one minute
Speaker 3: and thirty seven seconds on on this on this piece,
Speaker 3: it would have taken you know, three and a half
Speaker 3: minutes to read the whole thing. And you think, wow,
Speaker 3: they couldn't even they couldn't even give me three and
Speaker 3: a half.
Speaker 1: No, they couldn't. I wonder is that connected to your
Speaker 1: departure from film criticism and moving into because you're in
Speaker 1: the review of books now, aren't you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I went. I mean it was it was
Speaker 3: a few things. I had started out as a as
Speaker 3: as a book critic before, before I before I went
Speaker 3: into movies. So in some ways it was something that
Speaker 3: I had always thought I would get back to. I
Speaker 3: thought when I was hired to be a film critic,
Speaker 3: I thought, well, this would be an interesting thing to.
Speaker 2: Do for a while.
Speaker 3: But really, you know, I'm this is this is a sideline,
Speaker 3: and I'm really a literary critic. And then that lasted
Speaker 3: twenty five years, and and uh so I wanted to
Speaker 3: get to get back, you know, back to that while
Speaker 3: there was still time in in my in my productive years,
Speaker 3: and and also to get just sort of off of
Speaker 3: the treadmill of the of the weekly review. I mean,
Speaker 3: the thing about being a film critic is that there
Speaker 3: is just it's it's kind of relentless. So you're seeing
Speaker 3: five or six movies a week, you're reviewing two or
Speaker 3: three of them, you know, week in and week out,
Speaker 3: year in, year out, and at a certain point you
Speaker 3: you kind of feel like you've I felt like I was,
Speaker 3: I was starting to run out of ideas and.
Speaker 2: Of of of moves.
Speaker 1: And does a row view of the does a row
Speaker 1: view of the love of the of the genre itself?
Speaker 1: Does it? Does it demystify it to any extent where
Speaker 1: you can connect to it in the same way?
Speaker 3: I think it does by repetition because you've seen, you know,
Speaker 3: the same thing, like there there are there are so
Speaker 3: many movies are you know, movies belong to two different
Speaker 3: genres and styles and schools. And in a way it's
Speaker 3: not their fault that they have so much in common
Speaker 3: that they're so you know that they follow certain formulas
Speaker 3: and patterns. But when you've seen hundreds that are sort
Speaker 3: of doing this, whether it's whether it's art films or
Speaker 3: commercial movies or whatever, when you think to yourself, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: I know this one, I've seen this one before. That
Speaker 3: in a way that is a disservice to the individual
Speaker 3: movie you're looking at, because most viewers don't see it
Speaker 3: that way. They're seeing this movie and they're not thinking
Speaker 3: of sort of the hundreds more like it.
Speaker 2: But I also thought, you know that.
Speaker 3: One thing that I always worried about, and I always
Speaker 3: thought about, and as I would kind of read other
Speaker 3: critics would think about, is that I would always worry
Speaker 3: about getting to a point where I would be mostly
Speaker 3: looking backwards, where I would think, oh, you know, they
Speaker 3: don't make them like they used to, or the great
Speaker 3: movies I've all been made, and not being receptive to
Speaker 3: was new.
Speaker 2: And what was interesting and what was happening in the present.
Speaker 3: And I was thought, if I felt like I was
Speaker 3: getting there, that would be the time to stop, because art,
Speaker 3: did you get there?
Speaker 1: Not quite? I stopped before I got there. It's weird
Speaker 1: because you know, I haven't made a bunch of independent
Speaker 1: films when I was I don't know, in my thirties
Speaker 1: early forties, before I started Late Night, I did a
Speaker 1: lot of that and that was a lot of how
Speaker 1: I earned my living. And yeah, and I loved it.
Speaker 1: But I look at film now because it was my
Speaker 1: life and I was making them. They I look at
Speaker 1: film now and I think it's harder and harder to
Speaker 1: find in the film business. Uh, I kind of the
Speaker 1: idea that films are art. They are they are worthy
Speaker 1: of academic examination in the form of the kind of
Speaker 1: criticism you do. It's no, I don't I don't see.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm not looking. But is it still there?
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's still there, but I think that
Speaker 3: it's it's gotten smaller and more marginal in a way.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that there were always, you know,
Speaker 3: there were always bad movies and good movies. They're always
Speaker 3: sure commercial movies, right, and some of those bad movies
Speaker 3: are kind of good. But I do feel like, and
Speaker 3: I don't know, you know, if it's because of streaming
Speaker 3: or because of other changes in the in the in
Speaker 3: the business, or other kind of generational shifts, but I
Speaker 3: do find something similar that that that you have to
Speaker 3: look much harder, and that the movies that are ambitious
Speaker 3: in that way, or creative in that way, or or
Speaker 3: artistic in that way, are being made at a smaller
Speaker 3: and smaller scale and for a smaller and smaller audience.
Speaker 3: So it's a little bit sometimes I feel like.
Speaker 1: I think it's I think it's economics in America particularly,
Speaker 1: I was I worked with an Italian film director ones
Speaker 1: called Roberto Faienza, who who said, we were making a
Speaker 1: film in Italy, and it was like it was a
Speaker 1: lot of money again, spending those things I mean, and
Speaker 1: it was it's not really a very good script, but
Speaker 1: there were like you know, panzer divisions and like loads
Speaker 1: of cameras and stuff. And I was like, wow, you
Speaker 1: guys are I said to Robert, you know in the
Speaker 1: day of some enormous set up. You guys are spending
Speaker 1: a lot of money on this picture. And they said, Greg,
Speaker 1: the difference between Italy and America is this. In America
Speaker 1: you make movies to make money. In Italy, we use
Speaker 1: money to make movies, a different idea. And I thought
Speaker 1: it kind of is that the because Italians something even
Speaker 1: now of recent times, oh god, what's his name again?
Speaker 1: They have fabulous Italian director like Randi Blitza.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Sorrentinoo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, these movies are amazing.
Speaker 3: Exactly right, and they're they're at a kind of scale
Speaker 3: that unbelievable, even even the ones like that, the one,
Speaker 3: what was it called the Hand of God?
Speaker 2: Did you see that one?
Speaker 1: That is a fabulous film, unbelievable, It's incredible, and it's
Speaker 1: but it's a very like, you know, in a way,
Speaker 1: it's a small personal movie in terms of history. It's
Speaker 1: a story. It's his story, it's his life.
Speaker 3: It's about his his you know, his youth and growing
Speaker 3: up in the terrible tragedy that happens in his family.
Speaker 3: But the scale of it and just the the technique
Speaker 3: of it is so is so big and so extravagant,
Speaker 3: and you you, you couldn't imagine that in in you know,
Speaker 3: in in an equivalent movie in America would be like
Speaker 3: would be shot on an iPhone in somebody's apartment with
Speaker 3: their friends.
Speaker 1: I wonder for me, anyway, it's kind of like the
Speaker 1: same thing with music. I wonder if it's just because
Speaker 1: getting older and I'm like, our music is rubbish now
Speaker 1: and it's too you know, digitized and film is the same.
Speaker 1: And I wonder if that's one of the products of aging,
Speaker 1: is that all art becomes awful? But I don't think so,
Speaker 1: simply because there are guys like Sorrentino who exists, you know.
Speaker 1: So I think it's a And I wonder if if
Speaker 1: you go from I mean, first of all, the idea
Speaker 1: that you, as you know, as a young man, would
Speaker 1: want to get into criticism, is that even a is
Speaker 1: that even a thing now with someone is academic criticism?
Speaker 1: Even it's kind of grandfather then of the New York Times.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if it's anywhere else.
Speaker 3: I think it's I mean, I I do meet young people,
Speaker 3: and I do sometimes teach young people who are interested
Speaker 3: in it, you know, who want who want to write
Speaker 3: about film or want to write about the arts in
Speaker 3: in in you know, in a way that's that's serious
Speaker 3: and creative and and and literary. And I think, uh,
Speaker 3: there just are so few outlets. I mean, I don't
Speaker 3: think it's it's it's not like it's ever been an
Speaker 3: advisable way to make a living. It's not as if
Speaker 3: anyone would ever say to you, oh, if you have
Speaker 3: to go into film criticism, and you'll be you know,
Speaker 3: that's yeah.
Speaker 2: That's where the money is. Even even enough to pay
Speaker 2: your rent. On the other hand, there there there were.
Speaker 3: I'm old enough to remember, you know, there were magazines,
Speaker 3: and there were newspapers, and every city had them, and
Speaker 3: they all employed film critics. And they were alternative weeklies,
Speaker 3: which were hugely important in critism.
Speaker 1: I mean they mad, they marred to get a decent review,
Speaker 1: and those really marred.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they mattered a lot. They mattered in the local markets.
Speaker 3: And they were also great schools for writers to to,
Speaker 3: you know, to to to to come up and young
Speaker 3: people or people from from different kinds of backgrounds could
Speaker 3: have a chance to learn the craft and to learn
Speaker 3: something about about about writing and about criticism, and and
Speaker 3: that what I worry is that that doesn't exist. I mean,
Speaker 3: you can, you know, you can write a sub stack,
Speaker 3: you can write a newsletter. You can you can go
Speaker 3: online and and say what you have to say. You
Speaker 3: can post it on on social media on letterboxed or
Speaker 3: on you know, on on x or Facebook or wherever.
Speaker 3: But the the the sense of it as a as
Speaker 3: a craft, as a discipline, as as as a way
Speaker 3: of of of of being serious and and and of
Speaker 3: writing as well as you can I don't know how
Speaker 3: you I don't know how you learn that now, I
Speaker 3: don't know how you where where the the the the
Speaker 3: institutions or the or the outlets are that can teach
Speaker 3: you that.
Speaker 1: And what about the idea of uh of creating the
Speaker 1: because you write very well, did you ever write phelt No?
Speaker 1: Were you never tempted to do that?
Speaker 3: Not?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 3: You know, I'm I uh, you know it works clearly, yes,
Speaker 3: And and every once in a while I've sort of
Speaker 3: thought about it, and like you know, you'd be sitting
Speaker 3: around with some phrase, oh, we should write it, but yeah,
Speaker 3: let's write a screenplay.
Speaker 2: Let's write a screenplay about to this. But it never
Speaker 2: you must never do that. Yes, no.
Speaker 3: And and having you know, having been asked by enough people,
Speaker 3: would you read my screenplay? I never want to be
Speaker 3: in the position to be the person, you know, saying, hey,
Speaker 3: I wrote this screen would you read it?
Speaker 1: So I think if you wrote a screenplay, though, it
Speaker 1: would garner some interest that someone go, you know, I'd
Speaker 1: be quite interested in reading that, especially if you put
Speaker 1: a superhero in it or someone with magical powers. Because that,
Speaker 1: I wonder is because Scorsese took a law of flat
Speaker 1: for saying these these wearing movies. Are you sympathetic to
Speaker 1: his take on it? I?
Speaker 3: I am, actually, I mean I I I spend a
Speaker 3: lot of time, as as one has to, you know,
Speaker 3: thinking about and writing about and trying to figure out
Speaker 3: what to do with as a critic these the superhero
Speaker 3: movies and the franchise movies, and how in a way
Speaker 3: to give them the you know, to take them seriously
Speaker 3: and give them a benefit of the doubt and not
Speaker 3: not rejudge them, because you never wanted to be a
Speaker 3: snob and say, well, you know, I hate all of
Speaker 3: these kinds of movies. But but I do think that
Speaker 3: they imposed a lot of limitations on the creativity of
Speaker 3: the people who were making them, just simply partly by
Speaker 3: virtue of being franchised, of being you know, here's a
Speaker 3: pre existing intellectual property. You have to tell the story
Speaker 3: a certain way according to to you know, to certain
Speaker 3: conventions and procedures, and it has to be part of
Speaker 3: this bigger thing, which is not I think, a big
Speaker 3: a bigger imaginative thing so much as it's a bigger
Speaker 3: commercial thing.
Speaker 1: R So, So I mean I saw that. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you saw you see the movie Wolverine, the kind of
Speaker 1: or the story about which I was surprised by because
Speaker 1: I was like, that's actually a really good movie. That's
Speaker 1: a good one. Yeah. Yeah, it's a really kind of
Speaker 1: it's poetic and emotional and in and and dramatic and fabulous.
Speaker 1: And but I've watched a lot of the other ones
Speaker 1: because I have you know, I have young kids and
Speaker 1: or they were young at a point, and some of
Speaker 1: these movies are just dreadful. And they're dreadful because they're
Speaker 1: a franchise. I think. I think that's what it is.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that's right, because they just exist in
Speaker 3: a way to get you to the next one, to
Speaker 3: keep to keep the fans engaged, and not necessarily to
Speaker 3: provide in a way I think that some of them do.
Speaker 3: I think well, Wolverring is a good example to provide
Speaker 3: a sort of a complete experience in and of themselves.
Speaker 3: And uh and I think that that that it's sort
Speaker 3: of run certainly in the Marvel universe, I think has
Speaker 3: has has run into real into a real dry period.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't think those.
Speaker 1: Well, it's it's it's interesting because to even talk about
Speaker 1: these things, and you I've read some stuff you wrote
Speaker 1: about this about the fandom in these things is actually
Speaker 1: for a very overused word, but I can't think of
Speaker 1: any word. One off the top of my head right
Speaker 1: now is the word that there's a toxic nature to
Speaker 1: this kind of allegiance to franchises and movies, the kind
Speaker 1: of comic con warriors who will defend their their franchises
Speaker 1: that basically they're just customers of with some wild loyalty.
Speaker 1: Do you think that, I mean, I don't remember that
Speaker 1: existing before maybe Star Wars and stuff, but not really.
Speaker 3: No, I don't think so. I mean, I think I
Speaker 3: think it grew out of I think it, you know, fandom.
Speaker 3: It's an interesting history because I think it went from
Speaker 3: being a kind of subcultural thing among young people right
Speaker 3: that who who you know, who felt like they were
Speaker 3: maybe outsiders or misunderstood or nerds, and and here was
Speaker 3: a thing that that that they could connect to and
Speaker 3: and connect with each other through their through their mutual
Speaker 3: interest in and at a certain point that became a
Speaker 3: form of that became a dominant form in the culture
Speaker 3: and in the way the culture is consumed with I
Speaker 3: think exactly. I think toxic is the word, and I
Speaker 3: think that I've always felt like a lot of what
Speaker 3: is most kind of uh uncivil, let's say, in our politics,
Speaker 3: in our political discourse, not to get too much into
Speaker 3: that came from or has a sort of analogy with fandom,
Speaker 3: that is that it's this thing. You know, you you're part
Speaker 3: of this collective thing and nobody can criticize it, and
Speaker 3: and you will take it personally. You know, if if
Speaker 3: if I, as a reviewer for the New York Times
Speaker 3: say well, this movie is not so good, you know,
Speaker 3: I have I've insulted you, right, I've I've you know.
Speaker 1: And I've had those exact things happened to me in
Speaker 1: my life short of the New York Times, where not
Speaker 1: that nearly from you, but from from critics have said
Speaker 1: this movie is no good and I've spent you know,
Speaker 1: two years of my life making it happen. And you know,
Speaker 1: you get this much column space to dismiss it. But
Speaker 1: and I used to get mad at that, but now
Speaker 1: you don't even get that, no get you know, I see,
Speaker 1: I think it's even worse. I think it's it's when
Speaker 1: people not in show business start looking at the top
Speaker 1: ten grossing films. That's crazy. What is that going to
Speaker 1: do with anything? Unless you have money in the game.
Speaker 1: Unless you have skin in the game, why are you involved.
Speaker 1: You know, like the movie Twister made more money than
Speaker 1: Finnie an Alexander. There for the movie Twister is a
Speaker 1: bear movie then, or the movie Twister makes more than Ladolchivita. Therefore,
Speaker 1: the movie Twister is a bear movie and the Ladolchivita
Speaker 1: that's insane.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And and I think that that it's become
Speaker 3: because also people people didn't necessarily know or care I
Speaker 3: mean just sort of ordinary let's say, newspaper readers right
Speaker 3: in in in in previous decades, you know, didn't necessarily
Speaker 3: know about or care about box office figures. But that's
Speaker 3: that's become a way I think of a kind of
Speaker 3: fake insiderness, you know, that that that everyone can feel like, well,
Speaker 3: I know what's really going on and I and I
Speaker 3: think that that that that Hollywood and and television kind
Speaker 3: of and and you know, and and the Internet and
Speaker 3: other parts of the culture too like to to to
Speaker 3: sell that it's like you're you know, it's a it's
Speaker 3: a kind of cynicism, but it makes you feel as
Speaker 3: as just the ordinary person, as the ordinary family, like
Speaker 3: you you know what going on? You know, you know
Speaker 3: what the real you're part of it, the real story is,
Speaker 3: and what the real value is.
Speaker 1: What about I mean you talk about the streaming and
Speaker 1: the you know, the way that movies are consumed now
Speaker 1: are probably you know, i'd say what ninety percent on
Speaker 1: screens the size of the ones we're talking on right now.
Speaker 1: I mean the idea of going into a giant movie
Speaker 1: theater with you know, a thousand other people and watching
Speaker 1: a movie. Does that in and I guess it does
Speaker 1: exist if if you go to you know, a retrospective,
Speaker 1: you know, Angelica screening of old Woody Allen movies or something,
Speaker 1: maybe not Woody Allen movies, but you know, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: there's well, there's that Woody Allen Actually a good example.
Speaker 1: There's someone who is you know, very out of favor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and therefore his movies are seen through Do you look
Speaker 1: at movies through and lens? If you learn something about
Speaker 1: the filmmaker you didn't know.
Speaker 3: Before, well, I mean i've I've I've struggled with this
Speaker 3: a lot, in particular about about woodall and I I
Speaker 3: wrote some some things because he's someone whose movies I
Speaker 3: would not be the person I am without, you know,
Speaker 3: without without Annie Hall, without without the early one sleeper Manhattan,
Speaker 3: and and and I just grew up. I'm of the
Speaker 3: sort of generation and background where he was was one
Speaker 3: of the main cultural figures of my life. I had
Speaker 3: all his books, I had seen his movies, you know,
Speaker 3: many times. And uh, I had to struggle with how
Speaker 3: I felt about him as as as as a person,
Speaker 3: and and and and and things that I that I,
Speaker 3: you know, under understood him to have done. And and
Speaker 3: I wrote a few pieces about that about my own
Speaker 3: struggle with it, because it was that where I was
Speaker 3: trying to just be kind of honest and transparent about
Speaker 3: it like that. This is you know, I can't honestly
Speaker 3: just say just wipe this person's work out of my
Speaker 3: life and say it doesn't matter to me, and it's
Speaker 3: not important to me. I can't reject him and his
Speaker 3: work that way. On the other hand, I don't feel
Speaker 3: great about it, and I'm I'm troubled by some of
Speaker 3: the implications in the work and in my appreciation of
Speaker 3: the work in terms of of you know, especially the
Speaker 3: let's say, the treatment of women and of of of
Speaker 3: young women in that work. But so I was but
Speaker 3: one of the results of that was was was that
Speaker 3: people who were much more on his side and very
Speaker 3: partisan kind of uh came.
Speaker 2: Down very hard on me.
Speaker 3: I got I got a lot of talking about, you know,
Speaker 3: sort of angry fandoms uh right, a lot of people
Speaker 3: who sort of said I was basically you know, a Nazi.
Speaker 1: For for for for doing.
Speaker 2: This and it.
Speaker 3: And it's a hard one and I'm I'm not going
Speaker 3: to say, you know, I was, I was right in
Speaker 3: every nuance, and I'm not going to get mad at
Speaker 3: at at at anyone who thinks about it differently. But
Speaker 3: I do think that young people, let us say, are
Speaker 3: not going near it. You know.
Speaker 2: I I've I've taught a lot of film students over
Speaker 2: the last ten years, and you know, I would I
Speaker 2: would ask.
Speaker 3: Like, how sometimes how you know, how many Woody Allen's
Speaker 3: movies have you have you seen?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: And and and they just hadn't it, just like they weren't.
Speaker 1: They weren't going there, which I think is a loss.
Speaker 1: And I think but I think also it has a
Speaker 1: kind of thing about it because you know, it's the
Speaker 1: separated in the art from the artist. I mean, how
Speaker 1: many young people know about Eric von Stroheim and boys, right,
Speaker 1: like you know, the or Man Ray or you know,
Speaker 1: there there's some very strange dudes around or or where
Speaker 1: for sure. I mean, even even the history of Hollywood,
Speaker 1: guys like Jack Warner, who would probably be in a
Speaker 1: lot of trouble if he.
Speaker 3: Or Louis mayor or you know, and and for sure,
Speaker 3: I mean, but that's as as I believe a character
Speaker 3: in which Helen Movie once said, you know, comedy is
Speaker 3: tragedy plus time, and the passage of time is does
Speaker 3: have something to do with it. And so I do
Speaker 3: think that you know, in in you know, twenty or
Speaker 3: thirty or however many years, if we're still you know,
Speaker 3: around and watching things that aren't just fed to us
Speaker 3: by by AI and and and algorithms, people will find
Speaker 3: those movies again, you know.
Speaker 1: And and well that's true. I think it's like history.
Speaker 1: Neil Ferguson says that history doesn't begin until one hundred
Speaker 1: years after the event. Until that point, it's it's just
Speaker 1: you know, because once everybody's dead, then you can start
Speaker 1: to get say, it's a perspective on things.
Speaker 3: And I've always felt that about about movies and literature too,
Speaker 3: And it's it's it's it's one of the interesting things
Speaker 3: about being a critic and writing just at the moment,
Speaker 3: when something is brand new, right in a way, that's
Speaker 3: the worst time to try to understand what it is.
Speaker 3: I mean, people aren't going to understand what it is
Speaker 3: until or people are gonna, you know, critics included, are
Speaker 3: gonna misunderstand it or get it wrong as likely as
Speaker 3: not in the moment, and then subsequent generations will figure
Speaker 3: out what it is and why it matters, and and
Speaker 3: and what value it has at least I.
Speaker 1: Mean, I really, I really hope that happens to my
Speaker 1: competitive hairdressing movie that's Stiffed in the year two thousand.
Speaker 3: Will I'm I'm confident, you know, And and they'll and
Speaker 3: they'll dig out the review and say, but you see
Speaker 3: one person understood.
Speaker 1: Well, somebody understood. But here's It's an interesting thing because
Speaker 1: I want to take you from uh, from the years
Speaker 1: as the film criticism and New York Times to going
Speaker 1: or returning to literary criticism.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I'm kind of fascinated by it because I I
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not trying to you know, claim on
Speaker 1: on your you know, hanging tales. But I wrote my
Speaker 1: first book after making a movie which I wrote and
Speaker 1: directed and starred in, and it's garbage. I don't like it,
Speaker 1: and I still don't understand why I don't like. Some
Speaker 1: other people like it, but I don't like it, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't what I set out to make, And so
Speaker 1: I went to I started writing a book because I
Speaker 1: didn't have to talk to anyone, I didn't have to
Speaker 1: deal with anyone. I just had to write a story,
Speaker 1: which was something that I would do. And I wonder
Speaker 1: if there's a similar connection to leaving film criticism behind
Speaker 1: and going to literary criticism like the way I mean
Speaker 1: it is that people who read books participate, right people
Speaker 1: who who watch movies. You know, Top Gun is a movie.
Speaker 1: It's a great movie. I love that movie. You know.
Speaker 1: I also love like Grandi, Beliza, and The Hand of God.
Speaker 1: They're very, very different things, but it's easy for me
Speaker 1: to watch them. They just I turn it on in
Speaker 1: there right there. With a book, you have to get involved,
Speaker 1: and therefore you're more invested. And therefore, I think what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to say is that people who who read
Speaker 1: books may be more inclined to at this course rather
Speaker 1: than fandom. Is that true or not? I think it's true.
Speaker 3: I mean, my my feeling about being a film criticism,
Speaker 3: a film critic is that there have been you know,
Speaker 3: throughout the history of movies most of the people who
Speaker 3: went to movies had no use for criticism, you know,
Speaker 3: didn't read the reviews right, and just that was just
Speaker 3: you know, I could complain about that or feel ignored
Speaker 3: or heard about it.
Speaker 2: But it was just true.
Speaker 3: And it's just you know, you go to the movies,
Speaker 3: you don't necessarily need anyone to help you out, and
Speaker 3: you don't necessarily want someone to analyze it for you afterwards.
Speaker 2: Some people do.
Speaker 3: Some people always have A minority of the audience always had,
Speaker 3: you know, been more curious, more inclined to want to
Speaker 3: talk about it, to want to argue about it, to
Speaker 3: want to think about it, and critics right for that
Speaker 3: sector of the audience and in movies, which means which
Speaker 3: is one of the reasons that critics always are a
Speaker 3: little bit movie critics are always a little bit out
Speaker 3: of touch with the mass audience. So you know, there's
Speaker 3: always the thing that that someone will do someone on
Speaker 3: a podcast or on a broadcast or somewhere, we'll say,
Speaker 3: you know, oh see this movie had made one hundred
Speaker 3: million dollars at the box office, but it got you know,
Speaker 3: rotten tomatoes. It was it was a fifty four and
Speaker 3: it was rot What's wrong with these critics? They don't
Speaker 3: understand these movies. But it's just it's just a different
Speaker 3: way of experiencing it and of thinking about it, and
Speaker 3: and it's it's something else that you want from it.
Speaker 3: And the people who read critics are are the people
Speaker 3: who are interested in that. I think you're right that
Speaker 3: people who read books are more likely. I don't have
Speaker 3: any statistics about this or any any data, but it
Speaker 3: seems intuitively that people who read books are perhaps more
Speaker 3: interested in criticism, partly because of the kind of commitment
Speaker 3: that reading a book is, and uh that it's it's
Speaker 3: it's a kind of experience that you might want to,
Speaker 3: uh to keep going with or keep or keep engaging with.
Speaker 2: I mean, I was really yeah, good.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, I'm interested because I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: the the book is always better than the movie. I
Speaker 1: can can I can't think of any time, perhaps maybe
Speaker 1: to kill a Mockingburg, the moking bird, they kind of
Speaker 1: get it even but to my mind, the book is
Speaker 1: always better than the movie.
Speaker 2: People say The Godfather, the Godfather.
Speaker 1: Maybe, yeah, you know, you're right, you know, I never
Speaker 1: read The Godfather.
Speaker 3: It's not that it's not that good because which is why,
Speaker 3: But which is why I think it could be a
Speaker 3: great movie because it's a very I mean, it's not
Speaker 3: a terrible book, but it's a it's a it's a
Speaker 3: it's a sort of a trashy, pulpy book that you know,
Speaker 3: a couple of made into something transcendent that's beyond what
Speaker 3: what the book was actually doing.
Speaker 1: But that's it's it's a pretty good movie. I will
Speaker 1: agree that the interesting thing coupla is a fascinating subject actually,
Speaker 1: because I remember once talking to Quentin Tarantino on the
Speaker 1: old Late Night Show and he was telling me a
Speaker 1: story about, hey, you'll make ten movies and he's going
Speaker 1: to stop and that's no more than ten and he'll
Speaker 1: be lucky if he gets, you know that done and
Speaker 1: feel like he's done it. And I think he's done
Speaker 1: very well. But the I'm a big fan, but the
Speaker 1: but Coppola made you know, a popa lips now The
Speaker 1: Godfather and then and you see this with a lot
Speaker 1: of great directors that like and then it starts to
Speaker 1: kind of creak a little bit. I almost it almost
Speaker 1: feels heretical to see anything negative about Fransis Ford Cobla
Speaker 1: because of his you know, the wide work. But he's
Speaker 1: made some real stakers.
Speaker 2: It's I yeah, I mean because he's.
Speaker 3: He's such a sort of a sympathetic and and heroic
Speaker 3: and semi tragic figure and and such. I I interviewed
Speaker 3: him once a long long time ago, and he was
Speaker 3: just such a wonderful person to talk to because he
Speaker 3: just has all kinds of stories and wisdom and very
Speaker 3: kind of warm.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: But it's true, and and it's interesting because I think
Speaker 3: it happens in some other art forms too, Like he right,
Speaker 3: he made you know, the two Godfather movies, and he
Speaker 3: made the Conversation.
Speaker 2: Don't forget that one. I mean, right, that's my God
Speaker 2: and uh, you.
Speaker 3: Know, and he made Apocalypse Now, which is has its
Speaker 3: has its problems, but is pretty mighty.
Speaker 1: I think in the end it's a yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: a flood masterpiece is exactly same.
Speaker 3: But but then whatever happens, you know, I think the
Speaker 3: analogy there that I think about it's almost like what
Speaker 3: happens sometimes with musicians.
Speaker 2: You know where like.
Speaker 3: Bruce Springsteen made you know a handful of really great
Speaker 3: albums and you know, kept making music and some of
Speaker 3: those albums are really good, but it's not you know,
Speaker 3: none of them will ever be.
Speaker 2: Darkenest on Me inter Town. Right.
Speaker 1: So well, yeah, maybe, and maybe that's the that but
Speaker 1: maybe that's familiarity as an audience when it comes to
Speaker 1: you know, particularly with musicians, as you bring up just similarly,
Speaker 1: because the idea of Mick Jagger at eighty years old
Speaker 1: is still saying the songs that he wrote when he
Speaker 1: was twenty years old, right, you.
Speaker 3: Know, which are the ones that people want to hear.
Speaker 3: I mean, they don't necessarily want to hear the more
Speaker 3: recent ones, but.
Speaker 1: That I think. I mean, but if we're talking about
Speaker 1: what people want to hear VESU is a serious look
Speaker 1: at what in our forum is that It's like you
Speaker 1: were saying that they're kind of two separate things. You know.
Speaker 1: I remember I was a big fan of and I
Speaker 1: had him on the Late night show a lot, was
Speaker 1: the late Dennis Harper. It was Dennis was very funny
Speaker 1: and very clever and very talented about art. And I
Speaker 1: used to needle them all the time because I thought
Speaker 1: that Rothkoe was a Charlatan, and I would say, I
Speaker 1: think Rothkeolle is a Charlatan. And what the hell is
Speaker 1: that these big things the usual I don't know about art,
Speaker 1: but I know what I like charlatan. And at one
Speaker 1: point he said to me, either because I loved it,
Speaker 1: he said, he said, yes, yes, yes, we've all heard
Speaker 1: that Roscoe is a Charlatan thing Craig, but he's important,
Speaker 1: so let's move on. And I loved it, but I
Speaker 1: still don't really understand. Are there movies that you look
Speaker 1: at and go, well, that actually is not a movie
Speaker 1: that I connect with, but I can see why it's
Speaker 1: important and it brought us to something.
Speaker 3: Now, Oh yeah, I mean I I think I think
Speaker 3: there are there are I think there are many and
Speaker 3: and and there there are films that I don't particularly
Speaker 3: you know, like or or or want to see again
Speaker 3: that I that I have to acknowledge the the the
Speaker 3: importance of or the just you know that that that
Speaker 3: they that they matter in some way.
Speaker 2: I mean I I I feel that way.
Speaker 3: You know this this if I, if I hadn't quit already,
Speaker 3: this would have gett me kicked out of the film
Speaker 3: Critics Club. But I feel that way, you know, about
Speaker 3: a lot of Godard movies. I mean I I I
Speaker 3: quite some of them. I quite like I I you know, masculine,
Speaker 3: feminine and uh and and Band of Outsiders. But but
Speaker 3: I look at a lot of them and I think, Okay,
Speaker 3: this is this is important to what film had to become,
Speaker 3: and this is an important kind of link between the
Speaker 3: classical Hollywood cinema and European art film and then kind
Speaker 3: of American new wave, you know movies. But these movies
Speaker 3: as themselves, I find he's there's something very kind of
Speaker 3: a cold and a little bullying about his his his
Speaker 3: his films, and and kind of aloof from from the
Speaker 3: the the experiences of the audience.
Speaker 2: And so I don't I don't like, I don't love.
Speaker 2: I can't say that's interesting.
Speaker 1: That's it. That's it's a very interesting thing because these
Speaker 1: are very esoteric terms, you know, jullying and you know,
Speaker 1: and aloof and I love that. And I think that's
Speaker 1: the absorbing it, the way that that even Godard would
Speaker 1: be flattered by, you know what I mean, like you're
Speaker 1: taking it seriously. But what's interesting is whenever, like when
Speaker 1: it's particularly around young filmmakers. I don't know what it's
Speaker 1: like now, but whenever you I'm sure you've done this
Speaker 1: whenever I was making films. Part of what you do
Speaker 1: in the publicity's things, you have to go and talk
Speaker 1: to film students about the you know, the qu and
Speaker 1: a's with film students, and there's always a lot of
Speaker 1: talk about tracking shots and close ups and the use
Speaker 1: of wide shots. And I think it's that fake inside.
Speaker 1: I think is trying to sound smarter than you are
Speaker 1: about it. But I don't know, in in real cinematic
Speaker 1: or any artistic term, if the technique is ever even
Speaker 1: nearly as important as the as the emotion that it
Speaker 1: brings up, even if that emotion is negative.
Speaker 3: I think I think that's right, And I think that
Speaker 3: in a way. I mean, movies are such an interesting
Speaker 3: example because as a critic, you don't I mean, you
Speaker 3: may know something about the technique, right, you know, I know,
Speaker 3: you know what a what a tracking shot is, right,
Speaker 3: whatever stuff is, or what you know. I can tell
Speaker 3: if a if a filter has been whatever. But but
Speaker 3: I don't know in a particular movie what you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know what what take this was, how many
Speaker 3: takes it was.
Speaker 2: I don't know what you know.
Speaker 3: I don't know in a way what I'm looking at
Speaker 3: from a technical standpoint as a critic, which is a
Speaker 3: little different than if you're writing. If I'm writing about
Speaker 3: a book, even though I wouldn't necessarily know how to
Speaker 3: write a novel, I know what writing is, right, I know,
Speaker 3: I know what the technique that that that's that's that's
Speaker 3: being put to use theories. But but a movie, in
Speaker 3: a way, when when you're thinking about it and when
Speaker 3: you're responding to it, all you have that you kind
Speaker 3: of are sure of is the experience that you had
Speaker 3: watching it, the the uh, the emotion or the or
Speaker 3: the or the the boredom or the enjoyment or the horror,
Speaker 3: whatever it was. You know that it was working on you.
Speaker 3: And you don't necessarily know and you may never know
Speaker 3: as a critic what it is that's worrying, like what
Speaker 3: made it work that way?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: I I I think about this.
Speaker 1: I had.
Speaker 2: I can't remember who I was talking about. I was
Speaker 2: once interviewing a filmmaker.
Speaker 3: Who who had I don't remember who it was, but
Speaker 3: who had who had done a film with it with
Speaker 3: a child actor, a very young child actor, you know,
Speaker 3: like six or seven, younger than than to and and
Speaker 3: I said, you know, there's this this scene which is
Speaker 3: so full of of kind of emotion where these these
Speaker 3: things have happened with the child parents and she's absorbing
Speaker 3: all this feeling. And I was like, how did you
Speaker 3: get that performance out of out of out of this
Speaker 3: young child? And she was like, she said, well, I
Speaker 3: just said look up that way, you know, yeah, and
Speaker 3: I pointed the camera this way and then and then
Speaker 3: you know, I mixed in the soundtrack. So it's it's
Speaker 3: so I thought I was looking at. What I'm saying
Speaker 3: is I thought I was looking at a piece of acting.
Speaker 3: I was not looking at a piece of acting. I
Speaker 3: was looking at, you know, a way of manipulating the
Speaker 3: person on the screen in such a way that I
Speaker 3: imagined that they were that they were acting. So you
Speaker 3: know what I'm saying is you never know, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a great example of it is actually
Speaker 1: you really don't know what's going is what's put together
Speaker 1: in posts that makes it work. It's a fascinating thing
Speaker 1: though that you should. I mean, you know about writing,
Speaker 1: and you know, but there are so many different ways
Speaker 1: to go a book, and also the idea that you
Speaker 1: can change your mind. Like me reading nineteen eighty four
Speaker 1: when I was at school at thirteen years old, I
Speaker 1: think was the first time that we were given nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four, and then me reading it when I'm forty,
Speaker 1: and then me reading it when I'm sixty, it's a
Speaker 1: different book. And I wonder, do you do you ever
Speaker 1: do you ever review something you've reviewed before? Like would
Speaker 1: you ever go back to a book that you reviewed
Speaker 1: before you became a film critic and review it again.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to think if that's happened.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've gone back and written about I don't know,
Speaker 3: I don't know if I've done it sort of in
Speaker 3: that way, but I've I've gone back and and reread
Speaker 3: and and and written about certainly about about writers that
Speaker 3: I that I that I wrote about before and and
Speaker 3: revisited their work, and and I've I've kind of I haven't.
Speaker 3: I would love to do that with movies too. I mean,
Speaker 3: in a way, just because of the sheer volume and
Speaker 3: pace of it. It was pretty rare that I got
Speaker 3: to go back and write again about things that I
Speaker 3: wrote about as a critic. I went, you know, I
Speaker 3: I I wrote about movies that I'd seen before I
Speaker 3: was a critic. I wrote a piece, one that's very
Speaker 3: close to my heart, about going to see E. T
Speaker 3: with my son when he was you know, seven or eight,
Speaker 3: and they'd re released it with a friend of his,
Speaker 3: not having seen it since since it came out when
Speaker 3: I was a teenager. And when I saw it as
Speaker 3: a teenager, I didn't like it because I was very
Speaker 3: you know, I was a very snotty, cynical kind of
Speaker 3: you know, punk rock art cinema and I was like.
Speaker 1: What is this fi rufic condition?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I know so, And then of course, you know,
Speaker 3: watching it again in however old I was, you know,
Speaker 3: forty with with my kids, I was just like a
Speaker 3: puddle of tears, you know, I just I was. I
Speaker 3: was thought, this is this is the most beautiful, moving, sad,
Speaker 3: you know, wonderful movie I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: Steel said an interesting thing actually, but it wasn't about
Speaker 1: ET but it was about he said a lot of
Speaker 1: interesting things. But he said something about Close Encounters. That
Speaker 1: he said that he had, you know, made the movie
Speaker 1: before he had children, right, and that you know, when
Speaker 1: Richard Drafis leaves, he said I've been that would never
Speaker 1: have even do that. You know, once you have kids,
Speaker 1: you would, yeah, go to another planet and see things like, nah,
Speaker 1: you got to be here with the kids. But as
Speaker 1: an entering the thing about the like we're talking about
Speaker 1: the idea that art change. People find art over time,
Speaker 1: they come back to it and they look at it.
Speaker 1: But I wonder if that's a personal thing too, and
Speaker 1: that you know, it does change for the book. You know,
Speaker 1: if I read On Them with the Winds when I'm twenty,
Speaker 1: and I read it when I'm sixty, I'm I'm a
Speaker 1: different character in the book, you know. And I I
Speaker 1: wonder if if when you write things, because I know
Speaker 1: I've written stuff, I've made stuff, I've told jokes even
Speaker 1: that I thought, oh god, I would I would never
Speaker 1: say that now that's a horrible thing to say. I've
Speaker 1: done that quite a lot actually, like this week. But
Speaker 1: the but the idea of is that something like have
Speaker 1: you ever looked at a movie review and you go,
Speaker 1: I got that completely wrong? Oh?
Speaker 3: Often, you know, completely wrong or some percentage wrong, you know,
Speaker 3: some some I I I I was I was too enthusiastic,
Speaker 3: or I was too critical, or I just I I
Speaker 3: I missed it, and and it's it's part of I mean,
Speaker 3: I came to think that it's it's kind of part
Speaker 3: of the the job to be to be wrong. It
Speaker 3: was partly partly because of what I was saying before
Speaker 3: that you're you're, you know, you're, you're, you're looking at
Speaker 3: this thing when this thing is brand new and the
Speaker 3: world might not be ready for it, and you might
Speaker 3: not be ready for it. And also you're you're, you're
Speaker 3: a person, you know, at whatever point in your life
Speaker 3: you are so so I I think, I think it's
Speaker 3: generally true of of of of critics when when we're
Speaker 3: when we're young, are much more much more aggressive, much
Speaker 3: more much more hostile, much more and more likely in
Speaker 3: a way to be offended to think I I I
Speaker 3: remember thinking this that you know that.
Speaker 1: That's that thing that's just critics. I don't think. I
Speaker 1: think I think everywhere. I mean, if you look at
Speaker 1: the kind of the fractious nature of the relationship between
Speaker 1: older people and younger people like now, and I know
Speaker 1: Socrates who are going on about the world is going
Speaker 1: to Helena and Basket because of the young people, and
Speaker 1: they're writing things down, you know, I mean, it's like
Speaker 1: I think it's true. Is a is a bit of
Speaker 1: a product of age that on each end of it,
Speaker 1: I think you are a little more aggressive. Our person
Speaker 1: is a little more aggressive and self righteous when you're young.
Speaker 1: And I think when you're older, you get you get
Speaker 1: a little kind of well, maybe I should lighten up.
Speaker 1: If you're lucky, if you if you're in the right way,
Speaker 1: you should lighten up a little, right, you should.
Speaker 3: You become more more more tolerant, a little more a
Speaker 3: little more philosophical, because I do remember feeling like, you know,
Speaker 3: taking it, taking it personally, that every every bad movie
Speaker 3: was was a sort of, you know, a.
Speaker 2: Crime that I had to avenge.
Speaker 1: Right, And how what we've established in the nature of
Speaker 1: our conversation here today is that older people our age
Speaker 1: are much cooler than younger people their age, And that
Speaker 1: is the truth of what we've arrived at.
Speaker 3: I think, yes, that's that's that's the hard, the hard
Speaker 3: wisdom of the years. That's how we that's how we
Speaker 3: earned these these gray hairs on our on our heads.
Speaker 1: Exactly. It's an absolute joy talking to you, Tony. I
Speaker 1: I really really enjoyed it, and I I was very
Speaker 1: pleased before had I looked on and you were actually
Speaker 1: kind to me about some pretty movies that I was
Speaker 1: involved in. It made me very happy, Thank goodness.
Speaker 3: I had no idea at the time that it would,
Speaker 3: you know, come back to to pay such a good dividend,
Speaker 3: but this has really been my pleasure.
Speaker 1: It's been well. Thanks for coming. Lovely told you